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Vindication-class Cruiser
The Great Schism was devastating to both sides of the brief but violent conflict, and devastated both fleets. What was left of the Sangheili fleet was destroyed when the Flood broke their quarantine, while the Covenant lost what was left of theirs in the battle for the Ark. After the Schism, both sides were forced to replenish their fleets before they could begin their campaigns against each other, and while a number of new ships were commissioned for the purpose, they were expensive and rare. For the most part, both sides acquired older ships that had been decommissioned and upgraded them to compete against modern technology. The Vindication-class cruiser was one of these, and while it is classified as a cruiser, when it re-entered service it barely matched the capabilities of modern Covenant frigates. History Unggoy Rebellion Over the centuries that the Covenant have traversed the stars, there have been few civilisations capable of withstanding the naval might of the Covenant Navy and its use of repurposed Forerunner technology. As such, there has been little need for technological progression, not helped by the reluctance of the Prophets to improve upon the technology used by the Navy. One of many constructed during what was a relatively peaceful period for the Covenant, the Vindication-class was mostly intended for patrols along the outer territories, and for limited carrier/troo transport duties. When the Unggoy Rebellion broke out, and the massive insurrection began to spread, the Righteous Vindications found themselves in a war they were almost perfectly designed for. Ferrying troops, fighters and dropships from planet to the planet, they played a major part in the pacification of the Covenant worlds affected by Unggoy uprising. When hostilities ceased, they were put to work carrying personnel to assess the damage and rebuild what was destroyed. For decades, the Vindications would continue to serve as patrol and escort craft, notably during the Hekhaka-Tohya Ambush against Kig-Yar pirates, and the numerous pirate groups that operated along the very fringes of Covenant space. Their last major peacetime operation was the Battle of Ehkratz, when they engaged Sangheili secessionists in the Yothona System, glassing Cloistering Expectancy. The planet would become a strategic graveyard site - with no war anticipated, most of the unneeded or older ships were decommissioned there, disassembled by local work crews for scrap. Human-Covenant War When the Covenant began the campaign against humanity, very few of the Vindications were left in service, and of these most were relegated to patrolling backwater colonies, their Shipmasters usually only recent graduates of the War Colleges. More experienced Shipmasters were sometimes assigned to these as punishment for failure, or as temporary commands until a more suitable ship was ready. The few that did participate in the war were normally by accident - the CCS Unmitigating Guile was hijacked by secessionists, its Shipmaster forcing the ship into a random course - it just so happened that they erupted onto the scene of the Second Battle of Harvest, crashing onto the planets surface after straying into UNSC fire. Other ships, like the CCS Revelation of Truth served as troopships, especially during the Draco III, Jericho VII and Reach campaigns, but by the end of 2552 that was all they served as - all combat-ready ships had been decommissioned, or scheduled for decommissioning. Recommissioning Perhaps the closest analog to the Vindication-class is the UNSC Herald-class colonial support ship - an older ship class, scheduled for decommissioning, brought back into service because of an emergency lack of ships to field. After the devastation of the Sangheili fleet as the Flood-controlled High Charity broke their attempted quarantine, the Sangheili were forced to adopt less suitable ships to fill out the bulk of their fleet. Some were commissioned expressedly for the purpose, such as the Reliquary-Class Battleship, but given the scarcity of time and resources, the Sangheili were forced to appropriate less advanced ships, refitting them for combat and updating them to remain competitive. Likewise, the loss of the majority of their fleet and leadership struck the Covenant remnant hard, and they were forced to adopt cheaper or pre-existing designs to fill out their fleet for combat against the Sangheili. Both sides refitted recommissioned Vindications, with the Covenant possessing double the number thanks to their defence of the Yothona System and their possession of the Cloistering Expectancy Ship Graveyard, from which they pulled hundreds of ships back into service. Though the Covenant held the advantage in numbers, the Sangheili's alliance with humanity had advantages - the adoption of plasma beam weapons was standard throughout the Sangheili fleet, and though human scientists remained reluctant to part with their superior energy shield technology, a small number of ships adopted a modified version of the human CEMPF as an anti-plasma protective countermeasure, one which was unexpected by the Covenant. A Sangheili-held Vindication, on average, was worth two Jiralhanae-held Vindications, at least technically - in practice, they managed to inflict losses disproportionate to their quality, due largely to Jiralhanae inability to change their thinking patterns, adamantly refusing to acknowledge the possibility that the Sangheili-held Vindications were better than their own. Design The Vindication-class has an unusual layout for a Covenant ship, dividing its hull into three sections. Technically, there is no central hull, consisting more of an upper hull and a lower hull connected by a thin disk-shaped section. Each hull half sipers off into winglike side extensions, where the ship carries its plasma weapons, while on the ventral bow hull are its twin energy projector turrets. While this means it has significant anti-ship capabilities, it performs poorly against enemy fighters – UNSC Longswords found the Vindications to be the least-defended ships in the Covenant fleet, forced to rely on a mere two point defence lasers and fighter escort from nearby Carriers. Jiralhanae refits added more laser turrets, improving its CIWS capability - the Sangheili opted instead to add hangar space for additional Preta fighters for to intercept threats, and added CEMPF systems to neutralise enemy plasma turrets. The Vindications' odd configuration make them relatively brittle in battle, one of the reasons why they were withdrawn from service. While fine for supporting operations against Unggoy insurgents, they proved to be vulnerably to UNSC railgun technology, often shattering under the stress of repeated hammers by human MAC weapons, even without their shields failing. Their shield technology was also primitive when compared to the rest of the fleet, still relying upon a barrier of superheated plasma contained and shaped by an electromagnetic field, when the rest of the fleet had made the switch to full-fledged solid light barriers. When returning to service, both the Sangheili and Jiralhanae were careful to replace these systems first. The ship lacks even the basic structures needed to support a gravity lift, and is forced to deploy what forces it carries via dropship. For propulsion, the Vindications relied upon repulsor thrusters mounted to the rear of the ship and to the wing extensions, an oddity in Covenant ship design. These wing thrusters were intended to improve the ships manoeuvrability in combat, but were only useful along the lateral axis, making their evasive manoeuvres more predictable. Sangheili refits tried to offset this by mounting them on pivots, but they were slow to angle and prone to maintenance failures given the scarcity of Huragok. The Jiralhanae didn't try at all, and simply removed them, adding the extra thrusters to the rear in an enlarged cluster. Quotes * "We should have salvaged it for scrap and little more. That's all it is good for. There's enough material to make two or three cruisers - even that few ships would be better than what we have now." * "There are disadvantages to both ourselves and the Jiralhanae using the same ship classed, but there are advantages too. All of their weaknesses are well known to us, and our own can be...mitigated somewhat." * "I don't see what all the fuss is about, myself. It looks just like any other Covenant ship - big, purple, and funny looking." * "Its more than a century old. I daresay the humans would have refit it through their lives to keep up with progress, but under the Prophets there was no progression. Merely changed applications. What we called a cruiser back then, we would classify as a frigate or destroyer today. This is barely even corvette-worthy." * "Covenant ships always reminded me of sea creatures. You know, those ancient Terran ones with the wierd shells. Apparently this is based off a sea creature from one of the Covenant worlds. How about that." * "We had the pleasure of going up against one of these at Unmoving Virtue. Slow to manoeuvre, poorly armed and shielded, and its crew probably had no idea how to operate them. We destroyed them in a few minutes, and then moved on." Category:Cruiser classes Category:Covenant ships